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U.S. Federal Net Interest as a Share of GDP
Net interest outlays, % of GDP, by fiscal year
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.
Continuation · the recent trend, flattening · 3 years
Dashed: the projection from the latest reading. Shaded: the range about two in three outcomes land in. A projection, not a promise.
Palanor calculation from Office of Management and Budget figures via FRED: net interest outlays (FYOINT) divided by fiscal-year GDP (FYGDP). Fiscal years run October to September.
What the federal government pays its creditors, as a share of the economy. The interest bill climbed through the 1980s to an early-1990s peak, fell as rates came down, and has risen steeply since 2022 as debt rolled over at higher rates.
What this chart reads
- US Federal Net Interest · % of GDP (fiscal year)as “Net interest”latest 2025-09-30
Sources
US Federal Net Interest · % of GDP (fiscal year). Source: Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, via FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOINT and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYGDP. Public domain. Palanor calculation in src/lib/sovereign/us-fiscal.ts, run weekly by the sovereign sync after fred-sync updates the inputs.
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.